Jean-Philippe Coté y Victor Drouin-Trempe

Victor Drouin-Trempe is an artist, researcher and professor in sound creation and philosophy at Cégep du Vieux Montréal. He holds a master’s degree in philosophy and is currently pursuing a PhD in Art Studies and Practices at UQAM. His current research is based on the exploration of the characteristics of what can be called a “living sound”. In practice, the work consists of finding ways to elaborate “sound creatures” using algorithmic compositional tools, in order to lead to a broader philosophical reflection on the nature of the living. He designs interactive sound installations and has exhibited in numerous events and festivals in Quebec and internationally. He also produces electronic music compositions under the pseudonym v.ictor and is mainly inspired by the microminimal scene. Combining sounds of nature that he captures with digital recorders and sound synthesis designed mainly with modular synthesizers, he builds a rhythmic and richly textured music.

Jean-Philippe Côté is an artist, professor of interactive media and researcher whose work takes shape at the juncture of art, obsolescence, and technology. His interactive art practice explores a diffractive mirroring of the visitor’s body and gestures using appropriated, and often outdated, technical devices. By generating distorted and liminal self-representations, he underlines the dislocation between who we are and how we present ourselves in a world heavily mediated by manifold technologies. His award-winning work has been featured all over the world in various prestigious venues and events. He holds a master’s degree in communications with a specialization in experimental media, is a PhD candidate in the Arts Studies and Practices program at UQAM and teaches interactive media at Cégep Édouard-Montpetit.

ARTWORK

Empreintes sonores (Sound footprints)
Interactive instalation 

The work Empreintes sonores seeks to make visible what is latent: specifically, accumulations of sound data. In the installation, a Google Home Mini listens discreetly and records continuously. The captured sounds are replayed in a random way in the 4 loudspeakers and mix to finally end up in a sound dump – an imaginary virtual space in which would be found all the unused sounds that have been previously recorded by the digital assistants. At a certain threshold, a fragment of sound is recorded, and the sound wave is projected on the wall, as if the sound were frozen in time and space. A motion sensor tracks the movements and allows the sound wave to be explored. Rather than letting the sound move towards the ears, it is rather, on the contrary, our ears that must move to travel through the sound: the latter is freed from its ephemeral and singular nature to inscribe itself in space, which allows us to perceive, for an instant, the sound imprint in the environment.

The participant is thus led to experience the continuous sound capture and to see the traces of it. The digital assistant is no longer this small anodyne object that disappears into the background, but an agent that secretly listens and manages continuous data.

Artwork Link
https://djip.co/art/empreintes-sonores

Websites
https://djip.co
https://v-ictor.ca/